Author: David Spiech Page 80 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
60 Brattle St.
Cambridge, Massachusetts. [Autumn 1899–June 1904]

I have been reading more Fichte and Hegel, but my inner self rebels increasingly against their empty pertinacity and shocking habit of covering a paradox with a truism, and making you believe the absurd under the guise of the self-evident. So I shall be kindly disposed to the things-in-themselves.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
On board R.M.S. Olympic
At sea. January 29, 1912

We expect to reach Plymouth tomorrow at about noon, after a voyage of just six days. The weather has been wintry, with winds, rain, snow, hail, and rather rough seas, and the ship has rolled merrily, like the old fashioned craft; nevertheless, size helps, for the motion is slow and majestic, and most of the passengers (I among them) have kept well and not missed a meal in the dining-room.

In New York, the one day I was there, I went out to lunch, tea, dinner, a play, a musicale in a private house, and the ball given by the Whitelaw Reids to the Duke of Connaught and his family. I was in bed, however, by half past twelve, as we stayed only a short time at each place. I saw some agreeable people, and some striking costumes and jewels.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville, VA.

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 28, 1949

It is a mystery to me why I have let more than a month pass without thanking you for your Christmas flowers and the two inhalers. Perhaps the Bidwell’s visit had interfered with the normal direction of my thoughts towards Weston, Massachusetts; or that I had a false dream-impression that having just written to you before the presents arrived I had virtually thanked you for them in advance. Never mind the cause: the facts are that everything arrived and was appreciated; but I was suffering a good deal, especially at night, from cough, which didn’t let me sleep; and I had a great number of visitors and letters, so that I was tempted to postpone everything that was not urgent. Of late, things have got better. I feel as if the back of the winter were broken; there is more sunshine, and the callers and letters have fallen off in number. Moreover, the Benzedrine Inhaler which I had not used at first has proved most useful on a fair trial. It is not so pleasant, and like cologne or a nose-cocktail, as the old liquid Vapex used to be; but for about an hour it actually arrests the flow of mucus and consequently the cough, so that it is a great comfort, allowing me to read or to sleep for a while untroubled almost at any time. The directions suggest that it may be used continually, saying, not oftener than once an hour, which would allow 24 doses a day, and that it lasts for two or three months. I use it at much longer intervals, and hardly ever at night, as I have a sirrup that is supposed to heal as well as relieve; and this carries me over the night fairly well. My catarrh is chronic, and I don’t expect to be cured of it; but often I forget that I have it and pass days and weeks without any sign of trouble. This winter, however, has been trying, although in Rome not at all cold, but unusually dark and rainy: and although now the “central heating” works it does not help as much as the sunshine. Now at last we are having clear weather and I can work in the morning by my open French window. Moral of all this invalid letter: Please send me more of the “Benzedrine Inhaler”, in case my tube should be exhausted.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Rome. January 27, 1930

Dear Mr Hook,

It is very kind of you to send me these three articles of yours, and I have been reading them with much interest and (I hope) some profit. As I said in a post-card which I sent you some time since, I should feel a very general agreement with you—if you put things differently! For instance, on p. 124 of the Marx-Lenin article, you seem to contrast “human needs” with material forces. But what efficacy of any sort could a “need,” more than a thought or a prayer, have in the world, if it were not a material impulse in an animal body? So the “ideas” whose power you exalt on p. 142, might find some difficulty in making themselves felt if nobody had them.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 26, 1938

Dear Cory,

Strong turned up again a week ago, and seems to be looking forward to an indefinite stay. I see him every day punctually from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Caffè Aragno, in the darkest corner, looking toward the light, and accompanied by hammering in one or more directions, as the repairs seem to become more and more extensive, like progress, as they proceed. I don’t mind, as that is anyhow the time for coffee, and S. is in an amiable mood. He says his life has been a success; that he has solved the problem of body-and-mind; that he has enjoyed reading the foreign and classical poets (not the English so much) and that the review of his last book in Mind is accurate, that it reports his views so that even those who neglect the book will be informed about them, and that by saying that he would have done better to leave out the “poems”—of his own composition—, the review only confirms his conviction that it was the right thing to put them in. They show that he has feeling in his philosophy, not only “unconscious feeling” but suppressed religious feeling of the best American brew. This last, as you surmise, is not expressed by me in his ipsissima verba, but I think I convey his sentiments. The real reason for this roseate prospect over the desert of his life and the stony dryness of that little review in Mind, is that he has a new covered motor, like a bathtub with a lid to it, in which he can keep warm. The seats also slope uncompromisingly backward, so that he can’t concentrate his entire weight vertically on the tender south pole of his person: and a great cosmic philosophical relief and universal good will rise from there and permeate his thoughts. Even I come in now and then for a good word. He referred the other day—apropos of expatriation—to Peter Alden’s telegram to his son on that subject, as to a well-known historical event! Most delicate flattery to an amateur novelist, to suggest that his slightest creations people the public mind.

He asked if you had gone to London. Have you? Are you going, or is it given up?

Yours affly
G.S.

Symbolism here was not intended! [written in the margin alongside the first paragraph]

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.